1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a damping device, in particular for the damping of the movement of movable furniture parts of pieces of furniture, with a piston which is mounted in a housing so as to be longitudinally displaceable and which as a function of its displaced position forms on opposing sides two working chambers which are variable in size and are filled with a fluid damping medium, enabling by means of at least one overflow connection a throttle overflow o the damping medium between the two working chambers, wherein a piston rod which extends in a sealed manner out of the associated front end of the housing is connected on one side of the piston and the movement of the furniture part to be damped is transferred to the piston by way of the outer end of the piston rod remote from the piston.
2. Description of Related Art
In furniture construction such damping or also decelerating devices serve for example to avoid or certainly largely to reduce the stresses and noises occurring during the rapid vigorous closing of doors or closing of drawers of cabinets as the movable furniture part mounted on the carcass is decelerated jerkily. Damping devices which operate with viscous fluids, such as for example silicone oil, as damping medium (e.g. DE 103 00 73 A1) have the advantage over devices operating with gaseous damping medium that these fluid damping media are practically incompressible, so that they do not have any resilient properties which would seek to move the movable furniture part back somewhat out of the actual closed position after the closed position is reached. When such dampers are used the problem arises that the damping forces to be generated for damping of the movable furniture part are also dependent upon the mass of the respective furniture part and the speed of closing it, so that for different damping tasks different dampers are necessary which are adapted according to the required damping characteristic.